Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday January 01, 2014 @09:31PM
from the it's-a-wrap dept.

malachiorion writes "From Google's emergence as a robotics giant to Gypsy Danger's emergence as a giant robot (we can root for), here's my attempt to round up the biggest trends in robotics in 2013. These trends are by no means comprehensive or ranked, but feel free to add your own picks for the year's biggest bot-related breakthroughs and setbacks."

Was Google pushing LInux that year? They flog it now as Android and last I heard Android had over 50% of the mobile market. You may also be interested to hear that Andy Rubin who headed up Android is now heading up Google's robotics division.

Google has some serious technical and financial assets they can bring to bear and for you to just dismiss that out of hand reflects poorly on your intellect.

It would certainly be the first hunters I've seen who ever would go after something that could shoot back. (naw, just kidding, the only actual use will be someone shooting down some kid's toy helicopter, and claiming it was legal.)

Sorry to burst everyones bubble, but the true future of robots has been anticipated since the late 70s, by a man named Mark Pauline.He knows the nature of the robot and nurtures it for a dismal future.In a bitter message of hopeless grief, I present to you Survival Research Laboratories. www.srl.orgThe REAL future of robotics...

How does the moon count as a revival, when there are currently multiple multi-year old robots exploring the surface of another planet? I don't like nationalism, but why would Jade Rabbit count as more relevant than Opportunity or Curiosity?

Good point, though a lot of bots, like most of the models in the DRC, also use LIDAR to get a full 360-degree awareness. But check out NASA JPL's RoboSimian. They didn't do this for the first DRC trial, but for the finals next year, they're going to mount cameras around the entire body (it has the mounts already, but the ones in back are empty), so it can reverse direction, go sideways, etc., without having to deal with a neck, or wobbling around to get into a face-forward position.

Hon Hai Precision Industries, parent of Foxconn, has installed the first 20,000 of the "million robot army" they plan to use in their factories. (Hon Hai makes the iPhone. Apple just does the design, marketing, and some of the software. Hon Hai also makes Sony's PlayStation 3, the Nintendo Wii, Amazon's Kindle Fire, and lots of other stuff.)

Amazon bought Kiva Robotics. All those new warehouses Amazon is building will have many robots and few people. Jim Bezos has another robotics company working robots to replace the remaining people.

Most of the high-end car makers have demonstrated at least semi-automatic driving. Cadillac, BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Nissan, and even Ford have demos. Tesla is still just talk.

The Baxter robot, from iRobot, may bring robotics to short-run production. Cost is low, and it's supposed to be easy to teach.

Unless it were cheaper to outsource it to somewhere with less environmental controls, working controls for the remaining humans... somewhere like.. shit, I can't even think of a place like that. Must not exist.

Do you notice the contradiction there? Why would companies risk their own money and time building robotic factories if Foxconn already has the know-how and has already made the investment?
Why do companies outsource companies to other clean their offices, then? They could hire the cleaning ladies by themselves!

If I pay my factory workers 1/100th as much as an engineer costs and it takes a single hour to retrain them on a new project, I can still spending 1,000 engineering hours programming, testing, and debugging a SW update for the robot and come out significantly a head.

You're right, I left out a lot of the potentially game-changing manufacturing news, but mostly because I felt like it was iterative, and we haven't seen the full results, yet. Even Baxter (not an iRobot bot, by the way—Rodney Brooks hasn't done anything with iRobot for years) is a great-seeming bot that isn't really doing much at the moment, and that could get eclipsed by what Google comes up with.
I was torn, regarding the autonomous driving stuff. I kind of felt like that was, for the most part, ju

Language is an amazing thing, especially Australian English; there is hardly a word in the dictionary that isn't somehow a profanity in Australia (http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html):

Root (verb and noun) : synonym for f*ck in nearly all its senses: "I feel rooted"; "this washing machine is rooted"; "(s)he's a good root". A very useful word in fairly polite company.Root rat : somebody who is constantly looking for sex.Wombat : somebody who eats, roots and leaves (see also root)